Real David H.

After my other 3 marathons, I’ve been generally content to sit back and not do much. Each of those marathons have all had different stories, but all have left me with the desire for a break.
This time around though, with yet another different story to tell, I have a desire to keep running. Maybe the lackluster day has a lot to do with that — despite a bad day, I still came away feeling good.

After taking 5 days off last week — my longest break since being injured 2 years ago — I went out for a very easy few miles. Things felt pretty good, but ended with some soreness in my left knee.

Not bad … just sore. Kind of nagging.

I went ahead and took the weekend off from running. I hit the bike in my apartment’s gym on Saturday for about 20 minutes and felt fine. I really just wanted to run though.

Today I headed out for another easy run, was feeling good and then near the end, that nagging feeling came back again.

While some of it may be my body still recovering from the Richmond Marathon, there’s no doubt that I’m concerned. Immediately following my run, I made an appointment with my chiropractor to talk about this discomfort.

My chiropractor does ART – active release technique. Simply put, it’s a manipulation that hurts to make things feel better. Got it?

He pulled and stretched and pushed … and basically told me that there doesn’t seem to be anything that should cause long-term problems. If things continue to bother me after a few days, we’ll do it all again.

I know I’ve been harboring a secret here on the blog about another marathon, but I can’t avoid talking about it any longer.

I have an opportunity to run the Disney Marathon through a Richmond-based nonprofit. I’ll provide more details on that later, but my chiropractor told me that he didn’t see any reason I shouldn’t be able to run it.

Simply put, I’ve banked a lot of fitness, a couple of down weeks won’t impact me all that much and I can train hard in December and still get to that start line healthy.

I know from my previous experiences that running through pain will be me nowhere. In each of these two runs since the marathon I’ve stopped as soon as it hit.

But unlike 2 years ago, or previous injuries, I’m being much more proactive. In addition to today’s treatment and likely future treatments, I know that I have to do more strength work and core work in these last several weeks of the year.

I admittedly slacked off in the final month of marathon training with that and that’s all on my shoulders. Not only will it be helpful to get to Disney healthy, it will also help me get to other goals in 2013.

For now, I just have to be patient, which is something I haven’t had to do with running in a while.